Welcome to Cornwall. This gazetteer is a fan work, distributed with the kind permission of Atlas Games, who own Ars Magica. It is designed to be compatible with Heirs To Merlin, the official supplement for England, and The Covenant of Sabrina’s Rest, a fan work which covers the Severin Estuary and Bristol Channel, slightly to the north and east of Cornwall.

A History of Cornwall

The original inhabitants of Cornwall were giants. They made many of the great stone monuments that scatter the land. When Brutus and his retinue fled the fall of Troy, they landed near Totnes and made war on the giants. Brutus’s general, Corneus, defeated the giant army.  Then he wrestled the general of the giants, and threw him into the sea. Cornwall is named for Corneus.

The giants are gone now.  Perhaps the last ones were destroyed by King Arthur, or Jack the Giant-Killer, or the Sorcerer-Lord of Pengerswick. Two were transformed into rivers. Their blood is still found in Cornwall veins, and their graves are found near many churches.

After conquest, Cornwall was given to Robert of Mortain, William’s the Conqueror’s half-brother. Cornwall was heavily involved in the wars of Matilda and Stephen. The Earl of Cornwall was Matilda’s brother, and kept all of Cornwall committed to the Empress. Cornwall didn’t get raided and wrecked like the Midlands. When Henry II fought in France and Richard I headed off to do horrible things to the Muslims, the Cornish, with a few exceptions, ignored the whole thing. Cornwall’s wealthy and stable, but not rich enough to be a target of invasion. Not quite yet.

A Note on the Future: Richard of Almain

Henry III, the King of England in 1220, has a younger brother, Richard. If your game’s history follows that of the real world, he is given the Earldom of Cornwall slightly after the game period  He also gets Exeter in 1227. He’s a financial genius, and becomes, arguably, the richest man in Europe.

In this supplement he is called Richard of Almain because he effectively buys the role of Holy Roman Emperor at auction. He needs a nickname because there are many Richards in his family.  There are at least three other noblemen called “Richard of Cornwall” in his immediate circle – two uncles and a son. His sons, Henry and Edmund, also call themselves of Almain, literally “of the Germans” following his coronation.

The character of the Cornish

Saxon writers note that the Cornish are generous and brave. They are also long-lived and strong. They are less ostentatious than the Normans, and don’t have the Saxon love of war. The Cornish have indelicate manners. The nobles hunt, and cock-fight. The lower classes hurl and wrestle. The Cornish have their own language, spoken by virtually everyone, but those whose trades require them to speak other languages can get by in them.

Covenant Sites

Cornwall is the obvious place to put a new covenant in the Stonehenge Tribunal: in Heirs to Merlin it is deliberately left empty. In this gazetter, three sites are suggested.

The Isles of Scilly are the remnants of the flooded kingdom of Lyonesse. The fate of its people can be adjusted for your saga. Did they die, become faeries, or fall into enchanted sleep? The covenant of Stellasper vanished from Scilly about seventy years ago.

The headland of Tintagel was the birthplace of King Arthur, but few of his relics remain. When, five years into the campaign, a prince buys the land and constructs a castle, to reawaken the stories of the Once and Future King, the player characters are drawn into English, then European, politics.

Looe Island was an ancient trade site, where the Cornish sold tin to the merchants from the Mediterranean. One of these was Joseph of Arimathea  who bought his teenage nephew, Jesus, to the island. It’s a pilgrimage site, but may have links to smugglers and ancient lightning magicians.

Boons and Hooks

Covenants founded at any Cornish site might have the following Boons and Hooks. Additional ideas are given in the detailed sections for each suggested site.

  • Centralised Kingdom: There’s no unowned land in England. Most of Cornwall belongs to the King personally. Later in the campaign, the Duchy is given to the king’s brother, but this makes oversight more stringent. Richard is cleverer than King Henry, and he lives locally.
  • Healthy Feature: Cornwall’s fresh air and abundance of holy wells are thought to lead to longer life. Miners are, sadly, excepted from this.
  • Hedge Tradition: There are traditions of charmers and nightwalkers in Cornwall, which may serve more powerful magi.
  • Indiscreet Resource – Smuggling: The golden age of Cornish smuggling is after the game period, but it is so deeply embedded in Cornish folklore that a covenant could have them as an income source.
  • Meddlesome Saint: Many Cornish saints are gigantic and several are petty.
  • Magical disaster: The vanishing of Lyonesse, the drowning of Langonna, or the loss of the land around Mount St Michael might be repeated. The sea eats the land, and the Cornish don’t seem particularly alarmed.
  • Natural disaster: Cornwall has great storms and floods, however irregularly, and rebuilding after this disaster provides stories.
  • Regional Produce – Tin: This area is famous for its mineral riches, and for the skill of its miners.
  • Sailors: Cornwall cannot sustain itself from agriculture: it needs to import grain, and pays for it with the wealth of the mines, and the fruit of the sea. Many of the covenant’s people can sail and fish, even if this is not their primary profession.